By Nury Vittachi

Friday, 28 September 2012

World’s first gay person found

THE WORLD’S FIRST known gay person has been found. He lived 4,900 years ago. And there was I thinking the whole gay thing was invented by David Bowie in the 1970s.

But no. Necklace Man has just been found in an ancient tomb by archeologists digging in Czechoslovakia, according to a cutting sent in by a reader who wishes only to be known as Handbag Man.

Experts said there were lots of odd things about the skeleton in the 5,000-year-old tomb, such as the fact that he wasn’t facing the way men were laid to rest, and was missing the “normal male grave goods”, which I assume means he wasn’t clutching a picture of his chariot.

After noticing his necklace and other female items, they concluded he was gay (although he could have been an early ancestor of Michael Jackson).

***

Poor guy. It must have been really tough to be the world’s first gay person.

CAVEBOY:

“You guys go hunting, I’m going to go gathering with the girls.”

PATRIARCH:

“Men hunt. Women gather.”

CAVEBOY:

“Dad, I’m trying to FIND myself, I need SPACE, okay?”

***

THANK GOODNESS Necklace Man was found in Europe. Had he been found in Asia, the authorities would have hidden him.

Did you read about the Malaysian education official conducting seminars on how to spot gay people trying to pass themselves off as humans?

They wear V-necks, he warned.

(Mohd Puad Zarkashi warns about V-necks)

This shocked me. I have FOUR V-neck tops. I had no idea I was gay. If wear round neck T-shirts for a month, can I be converted back?

Interestingly, the public did not form into rampaging mobs to beat up wearers of V-neck garments, as officials may have expected.

First, a biriyani shop in Kuala Lumpur immediately offered free meals to any man in a V-neck, and then people of all sexes and cultures around the world donned V-neck garments in support of something, I think to support government officials’ right to make utter fools of themselves.

*** THE ABSURD ASIAN hostility to gay people is triggering a lot of curious incidents these days.

A New York restaurant manager named Fong banned a gay wedding party from his eatery, The Amber West Village, because such people were “bad feng shui”, a US court was told last week.

This would be unremarkable except for the address of the restaurant: Christopher Street, West Village—the gay capital of the world.

I wonder what Mr Fong will do next? Start a ham sandwich shop in Jerusalem? Sell cow-burgers in India? *** HANDBAG MAN told me that the places in Asia with the most “sophisticated” attitude to people favoring “non-standard orientations” were Manila and Bangkok “plus Shanghai, but that’s a secret”.

I told him to check out South Korea. The newspaper business pages recently said that men in that country spent US $495.5 million on cosmetics last year, more than any other country, although less than my wife and daughters. ***

MEANWHILE, I got a message from Philip Ardagh, a famous UK author. “I'm in touch with my feminine side,” he said. “She runs a hotel near the beach.”

(Pic borrowed from The Guardian)

***

STORY FROM KARUNA:

NASTY INTERNET trolls recently took a “creepshot” (a sneak picture) of Balpreet Kaur, an Indian girl unlucky enough to have a moustache and beard.

She read the long list of derogatory comments on the Reddit website and responded with sweetness enough to melt the toughest troll’s heart.

“It’s who I am,” she wrote, explaining that one’s body is a gift from God, and she’d learned to accept hers. “By not focusing on the physical beauty, I have time to cultivate those inner virtues and hopefully, focus my life on creating change and progress for this world in any way I can.”

Idea: Kick out bearded war-mongering religious leaders and put this delightful girl in their place.

*** VIDEO FROM GRANDPA FARDEL in response to the previous column, about male/ female attitudes: